Programming and Technology blog

So I ran into this little nugget this morning while working on a C# WinForms project in VS 2008 (might be an issue in VS 2005 as well).

Compiler Error: The item "*.resources" was specified more than once in the "Resources" parameter. Duplicate items are not supported by the "Resources" parameter.

Seems that when I copied an existing form and renamed the copy to something else (using the properties window) the refractor tool decided that the source form name needed to be changed as well. Apparently this is a common issue as I did a search for the problem online. Normally when you do a rename in a code file you get the option to preview the changes and apply what you want to. If you do this in the properties window or rename a class file in the solution explorer it seems to just make the change without a preview and globally.

I think that I need more control with this feature so you can turn this off in the IDE under Tools (for VS2008):

Options

Windows Forms Designer

General:

Set “EnableRefactoringOnRename” to false.

Doing this still allows you to do your refactoring (via the context menu) but now you have more control over what gets renamed. And as an added bonus it's also a performace tweek to the IDE.

A couple of weeks ago I purchased a HP Pocket Media Drive Model: PD2500s as a way to store large files (iso, vhd, gho, etc.) so that when I can:

Have a place to store my Virtual Hard Drives

Have a place to store my CD images

Have a place to store the last image of my laptop incase I need to restore

Have a quick place to do one off backups

Have a device that is small enough and large enough to store extra files I ma need on the road

So far the unit has performed flawless, I have no issues running my VM's or mounting ISO's from the drive and I don't really notice any performance issues. The drive itself is pretty compact (being a 2.5" drive) and the case only adds about an inch more to the over all length of the drive. The only issue I have is not with the drive but with the cable that came with it.

Most generic 2.5" drive enclosures come with two separate cables, one for data and one for power. This drive comes with one cable but has two USB ends and one end that plugs into the drive (see Picture below).

The issue is the two plugs need two USB ports closer than 6.5” inches or you are forced to purchase an extension cable. This is probably fine for most tower setups but a lot of laptops (older ones) don’t have two USB ports that close together. Fortunately my HP does but I can see how this might cause issues for users who may have an older laptop.

Here in Canada Best Buy is selling 8GB USB Flash Drives from Duracell (who knew they made USB drives) for $19.99. Now I have seen drives of this size cheaper but to come from a "known" name brand like this made me wonder how good the drive actually was.

When I got home I tested the Read/Write speed using the USB Flash Drive Tester (found here). I also tested my 4GB ScanDisk Cruzer Micro as a simple control. While I am not sure if having two drives of different size matters the results were:

Duracell

Write: Tested total 7645.999MB in 0:11:52 with 10.741MB/s

Read: Tested total 7645.999MB in 0:08:59 with 14.177MB/s

ScanDisk

Write: Tested total 3919.840MB in 0:14:46 with 4.431MB/s

Read: Tested total 3919.840MB in 0:07:56 with 8.234MB/s

While I am not sure how acurate my tests were but it does make you wonder just because it is cheaper is it really cheap?

Seems like during the summer time I have nothing to say, or rather I don’t usually do much blogging or coding. It is after all summer time.

Except for this weekend or rather today in general. As of lately I have been immersing myself in the world of the ASP.NET MVC bits (preview 4). I never really bothered with the earlier previews since I figured that they would be changing the framework so anything you learned in Preview 1 would probably be obsolete by Preview 5 and I was pretty much right based on some of the samples that I had downloaded.

My main interest is the idea of a pluggable view engine especially a Xml/Xsl transform view engine. A couple of searches via Google and viola I was redirected to the MvcContrib page on Codeplex. After downloading the source and samples I soon realized (probably like others to their amazement) there were no samples for the MvcContrib.XsltViewEngine. There wasn't even a documents page on the site.

So off I went again searching for any kind of help. I ended up finding one post on Google Groups for the MvcContrib that pointed to a blog post (link didn’t work of course). I ended up finding the actual person who created the actual library and the blog post about it and how to get it working (created in Dec '07 - oh boy this was not looking good already). In the end I did manage to get it working after updating the code to work with preview 4 and realized I would probably be writing my own.

And so I did, today actually (rather yesterday now).

More on that later, plus a sample working site with code. But I am tired now.